If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
I went to get a detective story. You have to kill time. But time will kill me too - and there´s the true, preestablished balance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the inevitability of time and the balance between life and the passage of time.
Simone De Beauvoir's quote speaks to the notion of time as both an ally and an adversary in the human experience. While we often engage in activities to 'kill time', the profound realization is that time itself is relentless and will eventually prevail over us. This duality highlights the importance of acknowledging our mortality and the fleeting nature of existence, emphasizing the balance between living in the moment and facing the inevitable end.
Themes
TimeBalanceLifeMortalityExistence
In practice
Example use cases
During a philosophical discussion on the nature of life at a seminar.
More from Simone De Beauvoir
All quotes →Two separate beings, in different circumstances, face to face in freedom and seeking justification of their existence through one another, will always live an adventure full of risk and promise." (p. 248)
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To catch a husband is an art; to hold him is a job.
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Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.
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As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning – the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
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